Rules of Engagement

by Hurley, Graham

  ‘Paul Millom,’ he said. ‘A friend of Sandra’s.’

  Gillespie nodded and shook his hand.

  ‘Dave Gillespie,’ he said, not bothering to qualify the introduction. He looked round. Sandra had picked up the bottle of sherry and was unscrewing the top.

  ‘Drink?’ she said.

  He shook his head.

  ‘No thanks,’ he said.

  There was an uneasy silence. Then Gillespie nodded towards the front room.

  ‘You got a moment?’ he said to Sandra. ‘Won’t take long.’

  ‘Sean’s in there.’

  ‘I know. Doesn’t matter.’

  Sandra hesitated a moment, exchanged glances with the man in the jacket, then stepped down the tiny hall and into the front room. Gillespie followed her. Sean looked up, the roll of whipping twine still in his teeth. Gillespie shut the door behind him with his foot. Sandra turned on him. She was irritated, and it showed in her face.

  ‘This better be important, Dave …’ she began.

  ‘Yeah, yeah …’ Gillespie waved vaguely in the direction of the kitchen, ‘sorry to barge in.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  Gillespie frowned. ‘That twenty quid,’ he said at last. ‘I need it back.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘ ’Fraid so.’

  ‘Oh …’ she looked confused, ‘cheers.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve spent most of it.’

  Gillespie looked her up and down. The perfume. The skirt. The new blouse.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘so I see.’

  ‘No, you don’t.’

  Gillespie shrugged. There was a brief silence between them. Then Sean let the roll of whipping twine drop from his mouth. It rolled over the carpet, towards the skirting board.

  ‘I’ve got a fiver, Dad,’ he said, ‘you can have that.’

  ‘It’s OK, son,’ he said, ‘we need twenty.’

  Sandra frowned. ‘We?’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘we.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘You and me,’ he said carefully. ‘And the boy.’

  ‘Why’s that then? Do we get to know?’

  ‘Sure …’ He hesitated, wondering whether to go into the details, to tell her about the rumours sweeping the city, the exodus already under way. Instead, he stuck to the meat of it all. ‘We’re heading west,’ he said, ‘and the boat needs more diesel.’

  Joanna put James to bed at half-past seven. The child had sat through his father’s interview on television, understanding very little of it but reaching forward time and time again, and tapping Charlie on the shoulder, and pointing at the screen, and shouting ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ insistently in his left ear. Charlie, who worshipped James and loved the attention, in turn chorused ‘Daddy!’ and pointed, like James, at the screen, kicking his feet and gurgling whenever Martin spoke. With these distractions, Joanna had found it difficult to follow the interview in detail, but she’d heard enough to know that the publicity and the news reports had been – as ever – overdone, and that there wouldn’t be any need to drive to Wales. She’d also been impressed by her husband’s performance, a warm, proud feeling that had surprised and delighted her. He wasn’t, after all, remotely insane. Simply overworked, and overburdened. A clever man trying to do an impossible job.

  With the interview over and the television off, Joanna had taken James on her lap, and given him a big, wet kiss, and told him that they wouldn’t, after all, be going to Granny’s. James, who was already old enough to hate being kissed, took the news badly, collapsing in a flood of tears. Joanna had quietened him for a minute or so, until the sobbing subsided, and then bent to his ear and whispered that he could wear his new Action Man pyjamas to bed, a special treat. The promise dried his tears at once, and he hopped off the sofa and ran out of the room. Joanna heard his footsteps up the stairs, and the squeak of the linen cupboard door as he rummaged around for his new pyjamas.

  Downstairs, for half an hour or so, Joanna had hung on, preparing the meal, tidying the kitchen in the hope that Martin might drive straight back from the TV studios. But when there was no sign of him she supposed that he’d been delayed again, and decided to get the kids to sleep before he returned. That way, they could enjoy the peace and quiet alone. She thought briefly about the champagne, and smiled. There was a bottle in the cupboard under the stairs. She’d put it on ice.

  An hour later, she closed James’ book, and pulled back his curtains an inch or two, and kissed him softly before dousing the light and stepping quietly out of the room. Caroline, as usual, was still reading, but Charlie, when she checked the nursery, was already asleep with his thumb in his mouth, the impossibly blond hair splayed out against the fitted towelling sheet on the mattress. She kissed him, too, and gazed at him for a moment, before tiptoeing from the nursery and crossing the landing to her own bedroom.

  On the big double bed, half full, were the two suitcases she’d readied in case they’d decided to head west. Now, humming to herself, she began to unpack them, returning her jeans and the odd dress to the wardrobe. She emptied one case and slid it into the space beside the wardrobe. Then she started on the other case, Martin’s, carefully refolding his shirts and putting them back in his chest of drawers. At the bottom of the suitcase was a lightweight summer jacket she’d bought him three years back in Viareggio. He’d taken her there for a surprise holiday, leaving James and Caroline with friends while they celebrated his promotion to Deputy Chief Executive. It had been a wonderful week in a big, cool, cavernous hotel room, full of light and shadow, with a balcony and a view of the long curve of coastline down to Livorno. They’d lazed on the beaches, and idled through Florence, and taken long walks in the late afternoon, up in the forests that smudged the soft brown swell of the Tuscan hills. Martin had been loving, and attentive, and relaxed, hers entirely. Happiness, she remembered, smelled of pine needles.

  She took the jacket out, and folded it carefully over her arm. As she did so, something fell from the inside pocket. Still humming, she stopped to retrieve it from the carpet. It was a postcard. It had landed face up. There was a black and white photo of a cat curled up on a bed. There were two pillows, one overlapping the other. The sheets were half drawn back, and rumpled. Very slowly, she turned the postcard over. Blue biro. Big, full, strong, rounded characters. She felt the chill begin, deep within her. She began to read, not wanting to go on, unable to stop.

  ‘Darling…’ it began, ‘…thanks for the weekend. And thanks for the pressies. And thanks most of all for the ring. The weekend I’ll treasure. The pressies go into our bottom drawer. And the ring will buy us champers when we’re very, very poor. Love, and all the trimmings. S.’

  Joanna took half a step backwards, a physical blow, and sat abruptly on the bed. She began to tremble. She wanted to cry. Nothing happened. Very distantly, in spite of herself, she began to understand.

  Duggie Bullock sat in the empty newsroom, nursing a glass of whisky. His feet were propped on his secretary’s desk, and he had one eye on the incoming news copy feed from London. The National Gallery was evacuating key pictures to an undisclosed destination. Greenpeace had draped a banner across the central span of Westminster Bridge. There was a seventy-mile traffic queue on the M4. Parts of the western suburbs were nearly empty. The Queen was expected to broadcast the next day.

  Annie appeared at the other end of the newsroom. She’d been down in the editing suites, talking to the camera crews who’d spent the day in the city. Her weeks of Falklands research had closed her eyes to what was really happening. Only now, listening to their stories, did she realize that Bullock was right, that the secret state she’d spent most of her life trying to expose, that indefinable conceit that lay at the heart of her Falklands project, was about to give itself away. Not in London. Or on some distant battlefield. But here. Ten miles down the road. In the abstract, it was a fascinating thought. In reality, there was no longer any question what she should do.


  She perched herself on the edge of Bullock’s secretary’s desk. Bullock pushed the bottle towards her. There was a weariness in him, a resignation, and she saw it at once. She eyed the bottle and shook her head. Bullock sighed and gazed out at the empty car park.

  ‘You see him?’ he said.

  She nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Smooth bugger, isn’t he?’

  ‘Very.’ She paused. ‘They all are. It’s a family trait.’

  Bullock nodded, thinking of Prosser.

  ‘Larry did well,’ he said, ‘and Goodman murdered him.’

  ‘I know.’

  Bullock shook his head, easing the top off the whisky bottle and refilling his glass. Under different circumstances, two years back, he’d have had the resources to pull in a team of researchers, to chase leads, identify themes, buy or bully his way to key interviews, build a case that might, after transmission, actually change things. Now though, with the big companies gone, and a hundred tiny operators squabbling over what was left of the audience, the costs of making that kind of programme were simply too high. He shook his head and reached for the glass. Watching Goodman’s performance, meeting Davidson, pulling together the other bits of the jigsaw, he’d finally realized just how unequal the struggle had become. By deregulating television – by cutting audiences and slashing budgets – the Government, any government, had won. Real TV journalism, showpiece TV journalism, his kind of TV journalism, was dead and buried.

  Annie looked at him.

  ‘So what do we do?’ she said.

  He sipped at the whisky, letting it trickle slowly down his throat, a little warmth, a little reassurance.

  ‘In theory?’ he said. ‘Or for real?’

  ‘Both.’

  He frowned, circling the rim of the glass with his finger.

  ‘In theory there’s not much we can do. Goodman will take charge. By tomorrow he’ll be Controller. He’ll have absolute power. He’ll be able to do anything he wants.’ He paused. ‘It would make an interesting film.’

  ‘Then let’s do it.’

  He smiled at her, the enthusiasm, the commitment, the belief.

  ‘What with?’

  ‘Me.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘A film crew.’

  ‘And?’

  Annie shrugged. Never short on self-belief, she saw no point in extending the list.

  ‘Luck?’ she suggested.

  Bullock reached for the remote control for the copy feed, and blanked the screen.

  ‘You realize what you’re taking on?’ he said.

  ‘We’re taking on.’

  ‘You, love. There’s only you. I’ll back you all the way. You know that. But I’m here, behind this desk. Down there…’ he nodded vaguely out into the darkness, ‘you’re on your own.’

  ‘OK,’ she said simply, ‘no problem.’

  He looked at her for a moment, trying to lay aside his preconceptions, trying to believe that this slight figure in jeans and T-shirt could really deliver what he knew was there. Maybe he was wrong about teams of researchers and fat production budgets. Maybe it really was simpler than that.

  ‘So you’ll have a go?’ he said. ‘Try and pull something together?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Starting tomorrow?’

  ‘Tonight.’

  He nodded and reached in a drawer where his secretary kept the office contacts book. He opened it at ‘M’ and ran his finger down the page.

  ‘You gave me a number,’ he said, ‘862564.’

  Annie hesitated a moment. The number belonged to Gillespie.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I did.’

  ‘Can I get you there?’

  Annie frowned, thinking about it, the scene in the hall, the clatter of the last of the camera cases being loaded into the Volvo outside, Gillespie in his thick polo neck sweater and fishing gear. They’d parted friends, but only just.

  ‘Not tonight,’ she said finally, ‘but later maybe.’ She smiled at the thought. ‘Fingers crossed.’

  Jermyn’s was a small, discreet, relatively new wine bar in an area of the city close to the seafront. It occupied the basement of a once-grand hotel, a place of shadows, and alcoves, and candlelight.

  In the early evening, the wine bar was virtually empty, and Goodman and Suzanne had been meeting there for nearly a year: glasses of white wine, and the touch of hands, and the slow dissipation of yet another day spent apart. They’d invested the place with a sense of spiritual ownership and, with the exception of Suzanne’s flat, it had remained one of the few rendezvous where they could feel safe. No one from the Civic Centre ever went near the place, and if any of the handful of girls Suzanne employed at the local office ever stopped by, they never bothered to enquire about her companion. He was simply an older man, probably married, definitely smitten. In this sense, and importantly, the wine bar had become somehow separate from real life, a world apart.

  Evans dropped Goodman at the door and parked the Rover across the road. They’d already left Davidson at a hotel in the business area of the city, an enormous slab-fronted building, barely a year old, which offered him the services and the anonymity he evidently required. He’d decided to base himself there for the time being, scribbling Goodman a phone number and an extension. Goodman, in turn, had confirmed his own number but had asked him not to phone before ten. Davidson had nodded but said nothing, stepping quickly out of the car and hurrying away across the pavement without a backward glance.

  Martin Goodman glanced at Suzanne’s Golf GTI parked outside the wine bar, and hurried down the basement stairs. He’d agreed to meet Suzanne at half-past seven. It was now eight. He paused at the foot of the stairs, letting his eyes accustom themselves to the half darkness. Suzanne was sitting in the corner. Her glass of wine was untouched. She moved her bag, and a fold of her Burberry raincoat, and motioned him onto the bench seat beside her. He knew at once that something was wrong. Instead of kissing him, she touched him lightly on the cheek, a cursory gesture. He sat down and apologized for being late. She shrugged and made no comment. He looked at her, wondering quite where to start, how much to say, what to keep back. She saved him the trouble.

  ‘I’m sorry I called,’ she said, ‘it was stupid.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘Yes it was.’ She reached forward and ground her cigarette into the heavy glass ashtray. There were three others in there, all half smoked. ‘I was a silly cow.’ She shrugged. ‘The whole thing got the better of me. God knows what you think.’

  ‘I don’t think anything.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ She corrected herself. ‘Did. I could hear it in your voice.’ She looked at him, direct, appraising, savouring the simple physical advantage the relationship had always given her. ‘You were very busy and very remote, and I was…’ she shrugged again, ‘a silly cow.’ She paused and let the apology lie on the table between them, then she leaned quickly forward, and took his face in both hands, gentle, mischievous, assured, and kissed him on the lips. ‘I love you,’ she said, ‘and I hate apologizing for it.’

  Goodman blinked. Part of the intoxication of the relationship had always been Suzanne’s ability to surprise him, to adopt a position, to stake out territory, and then to turn a series of deft somersaults that tore down the divisions between them, and confirmed yet again what they’d both known from the start. He felt for her hand, and began to tell her everything, nothing glossed, nothing withheld. He told her about Davidson, and the morning’s key meetings. He told her exactly how bad things were in the city, and what was liable to happen next. He said it was time to leave, and he told her he’d found her a flight. He described the visit to the TV studios, Bullock, Prosser, and he ended by telling her about Evans, and his new official car.

  ‘He’s a nice lad,’ he said, ‘I’m lucky to have him.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ she said drily. ‘Do bodyguards mind staying the night?’

  Goodman smiled and squeezed her hand, but the chill was back again, th
e sense of threat, imperceptible but definitely there. Goodman reached up, and touched her lightly on the face.

  ‘What do you say, then?’

  ‘To what?’ She paused. ‘Exactly?’

  ‘To the flight. Exxon are shipping their key people out tomorrow morning. They’ve chartered two Jumbos out of Heathrow. God knows how…’ He toyed with the glass of wine the barman had brought over when he’d arrived. ‘I can get you a seat…’ he said, ‘if you want. They’re going to Boston.’

  Suzanne said nothing for a moment, then looked away.

  ‘What do you think?’ she said.

  Goodman studied her, choosing his words carefully.

  ‘I think you should go.’

  ‘And what do you think I think?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  Suzanne’s mouth curled into a smile. She turned back to him, soft, incredulous, forgiving.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you haven’t, have you?’ She took his hand and looked at him. ‘Tell me…’ she said, ‘do you think I love you?’

  Goodman nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And if you think I love you, do you think I’m about to get on a plane and fly to America?’

  ‘That’s hardly the point.’

  She looked at him again, that same expression.

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ Goodman paused. ‘You don’t understand, my love. It’s all going to get very difficult. Especially this part.’

  ‘You mean it’s been easy so far?’

  ‘No. Of course not. But my time won’t be my own. That’s more than obvious.’

  ‘Has it ever been?’

  ‘No. But at least that was office hours. More or less.’

  Suzanne looked away, out into the shadows. The barman was polishing glasses.

  ‘I’m not talking about office hours,’ she said quietly. ‘As you well know.’

  Goodman said nothing for a moment. He’d made his speech, done his duty, advised her to make the sensible decision, to bow to events beyond their control, and cut her losses, and get out while she still could. And yet she was right. The thing had never been sane. Never been sensible. Instead, it had been wild, and selfish, and totally beyond the laws of rational behaviour. It was a relationship that made no allowances for reality, or for other people. If the world was to end, so be it. He took her hand again, and felt her fingers tighten around his.